Okay, I realized there wasn't a really logical stopping point in the near future, so I imposed one. I will get away from the TV watching soon and give Delly something to do.

I left District Twelve with the announcement of the rule change, and Katniss calling Peeta's name. I've decided to go ahead and use the "Finch" name for Foxface. It makes more sense than making up yet another name for her.

Katniss claps her hands over her mouth, looking alarmed, and I realize even before the commentators point it out that yelling in the arena could have been a very foolish move. Luckily, Clove and Cato are still celebrating rather loudly at the Cornucopia, and Thresh is too far away. The District Five girl--whose name, Finch, finally comes up on screen for a moment--hears and looks up, but just settles onto her branch for the night. She hasn't eaten all day, and is shivering in the cold. She very clearly couldn't care less about hunting down Katniss or Peeta.

Katniss moves to get down, then stops and looks up at the sky, letting the moonlight bathe her face. Her expression is hard to read--on the one hand, she looks like she's trying to look ecstatic. On the other, she looks genuinely happy and grateful. She pauses on the branch, then her odd expression fades and she sits back against the trunk

"Smart girl," Claudius says. "She knows it would be impossible to find him at night, and dangerous to be out and about. She'll be more likely to be able to help him if she's rested and she can see."

The silence in the square finally breaks, and a hum of interested conversation begins. Prim grabs my hand and smiles. "She'll save him," she says. "I know she will."

I squeeze her hand. I believe her.

I doubt anyone is really paying attention to the rest of the mandatory viewing, at least not any more than will be necessary to pass tomorrow's quiz. I barely register the legal experts coming back, or Haymitch being interviewed in a restaurant with a few other victors, saying that it's a great idea. One of the other victors says it's a little overdue. People in the Capitol are practically dancing in the streets.

People in District Twelve are dancing in the streets. Someone has pulled out a fiddle, and Mrs. Everdeen has grabbed hold of Mrs. Mellark and is spinning her around. As Mrs. Mellark and Mrs. Everdeen cordially loathe one another on most occasions, this by itself shows the miraculous nature of the announcement. Prim grins widely and runs over to dance with Mr. Mellark. The cameras are here, and I see Cressida and her cameramen filming us, but they look like they're having fun as well. Cressida has, wisely, taken off her high-heels and is dancing barefoot around the square as she directs.

I dance with several people in a circle, from town and the Seam, and end up kissing Edder under the willow until Jonadab throws cold water on us then drags me out to dance again. At one point, I am actually dancing with Gale, though he's quickly swept off with a Seam girl. The laughter and dancing are wild, maybe a little crazy, and maybe premature. But the idea that we could have them both back is wild and a little bit crazy as well. Katniss will save Peeta. No one doubts this. Then they just have to outlast the other four. It's possible. We could have them back.

Cressida doesn't need to set up interviews--everyone's feelings are obvious. She catches Prim yelling, "Thank you! Thank you!" It's broadcast live. On screen, District Two also seems joyful. It feels like we're all dancing together, though at least one of the districts will end up heartbroken, even with the new rule.

After the broadcast, we all drift home. I lie awake for a while, thinking vaguely that it would be nice if it could be like this all the time in District Twelve, with no town or Seam. I fall asleep late, and have trouble waking up for school in the morning.

Edder has drawn Katniss's mockingjay on his tee shirt. He's not as talented as Peeta, but he's better than most people. He gets requests from other people to draw it on their clothes or their skin. He says he probably shouldn't have kissed me last night. I roll my eyes and tell him we were all a little crazy. Then I kiss him again, and he doesn't exactly object.

The principal, Mr. Durigan, interrupts us with the very welcome announcement that our first classes are cancelled today--we're to gather with our years in the gym to watch the live broadcast. Edder and I split up. He goes to sit with the other Eighteens, and I sit between Madge Undersee and Barsha Carroll among the Sixteens. Madge is, for Madge, giddy, which means she actually manages a conversation for nearly five minutes before going quiet again.

The daytime live broadcasts are a little different than the mandatory viewing hours--less intentional drama-building, more second-by-second updates. Cato and Clove have finally figured out that Katniss killed Marvel, as they've followed Rue's trail and discovered small animal bones, and don't believe that Rue had any hunting skill, which leaves Katniss to be her ally, since they know Thresh is alone and Finch doesn't hunt. They guess that she'll be looking for "Loverboy," but fortunately assume that he's too weak to stay in the woods and start looking for him on the flatlands near the Cornucopia. Why they'd think anyone would be that stupid is left to guessing.

Back in the studio, I discover that Claudius Templesmith does actually sleep, as a daytime replacement is covering for him. The substitute is Leontius Bidwell, and he obviously has instructions to do his best Claudius impersonation, because the only way to tell the difference is that Bidwell's voice occasionally cracks.

"Katniss Everdeen is playing it very safe," he says breathlessly as Katniss eats a large breakfast in the tree. "She has re-organized her packs, and given a very thorough look around the forest floor. While certainly some audience members hoped to see a dramatic race through the night, it looks like she is practicing the mundane good sense that is more likely to save Peeta Mellark. I think we can be certain that she is not as cool about it as she looks." He cuts to a re-run of her calling his name, which, I must admit, does not look entirely disinterested. "All sources," he continues, "agree that the two became quite close during training. Is it love?" Another cut, this time to Katniss's face when Peeta confesses his feelings on Caesar's show. Bidwell comes back. "This shot has been analyzed by experts in the field of forensic psychology."

Said experts chime in, analyzing the tilt of Katniss's head, the widening of her eyes, the position of her hands. They consider her clearly delighted beyond reason at this new knowledge. More than a minute is devoted to how wide open her mouth is, and whether or not her posture indicates attraction. There is much giggling in the gym, as, in fact, Katniss pretty much just looks astonished.

They go back to the arena, where Katniss finally climbs down carefully from her tree, holding her bow at the ready. She looks around warily, but there's nothing to see. Thresh and Finch are off on their own errands, and Cato and Clove are in entirely the wrong place.

She stands quietly, her head cocked.

Bidwell's voiceover is nearly a whisper. "We have seen more than once in these games that Katniss Everdeen is a skilled tracker, but will she know where to begin to look? She must realize he was stung by the tracker jackers she used to attack the alliance he briefly joined, and can't have gotten far. But what is she doing now?"

What she's doing is readily apparent to anyone with a brain--she's lighting a greenwood fire in a place she has no intention of being. I doubt I'd survive twenty minutes in the arena, but even I can figure out her strategy. Bidwell pretends ignorance until she is actually headed off in the other direction.

"Yes!" he says. "She's realized that he'll need water." He brings up a map of the arena, showing Katniss and Peeta's locations. She is headed for the river, but is a good ways upstream from his hiding place. I sit on my hands to keep from biting my nails.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and look back to see Leevy Cooley, one of the Seam girls who I was dancing in a circle with last night. She smiles and says, "She'll get there."

On screen, Katniss has rounded the bend in the river and is coming near to the place where Peeta is hidden. She looks around, and I am afraid for a moment that she is going to turn around and give up--it's not a very safe looking place, with all of the banks and rocks for enemies to climb up on and get the upper hand. But suddenly she stops, spotting something. The camera swings over to the boulders, where Peeta slipped as he came and left a smear of blood. He tried to wipe it away, but he was almost unconscious, and thankfully didn't do a very good job. The map, now projected in the corner, shows that she's almost on top of him.

She stops at another spot that I'm guessing is blood, though the camera can't get an angle on it, then says, quietly, "Peeta! Peeta!"

A mockingjay picks it up, and others copy the cadence. The mockingjays get their own cheer in the gym, though it upsets Katniss in the arena.

She looks around desperately. The camera cuts to Peeta, who is asleep in the mud, but the mockingjays' call seems to have reached him. His eyelids start to flutter.

Katniss looks around desperately, but doesn't see him through his camouflage. She shakes her head, and climbs back down to the stream, obviously meaning to go on further.

She turns. Whatever she might or might not say next is drowned out by a huge cheer that goes through the gym. It gets louder and louder until Peeta opens his eyes in the mud, and then it reaches a volume that might well cause structural damage to the school. By the time this fades, Katniss must have said something about his job at the bakery, because he answers, "Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying."

"You're not going to die," she says firmly, and there is another explosion of cheering. I don't realize that I'm part of it until I notice that my throat hurts and my hands sting from clapping. I am also crying with relief.

The cheering dies down as Katniss realizes the severity of Peeta's wound and tries to move him toward the stream. It's nearly silent when we all realize that he can't move on his own at all, and is in agony every time she moves him. We've seen nothing but the hiding. I don't think I'm the only one who didn't realize how much pain he's been in. Barsha grabs my hand. Madge looks horrified. Behind me, Leevy makes some kind of comforting noise.

In the silence, the class bell is very loud. The sound on the screen goes off, and Mr. Durigan comes out. "Well, we've seen that she's found him and is helping him, so we do need to go back to our classes."

Somehow or other, we do. There is gossip between classes, as televisions are on in the gym, in the cafeteria, and in the hall--Katniss has managed to get Peeta out of his mud bank, but is now engaged in washing him, which is not all that interesting, though I hear a twelve year old girl in the hall giggle and say, "I wonder if he's naked under the mud!"

Coverage switches to the others for a while--the Capitol doesn't find Peeta's very long bath all that exciting, either, I guess--then finally gives up and goes to non-Games programming, so the televisions in the school go off. We finish our play in literature, and Izzarel gives an unconvincing soliloquy before making a half-hearted jump into the pretend Thames. I pass a quiz about the properties of coal slag in chemistry (in District Twelve, chemistry is a bit limited). I have lunch with Madge again, and this time Leevy and two of her friends, Billa and Tansy, join us. Tansy says that if Katniss can be on Peeta's team, then Seam and town can be on the same team here at home.

After lunch, I have history, which is at least not about coal this year, though at the moment, I couldn't care less about the failings of the society that preceded Panem, or the fact that it once banned coal. (Okay, history is a bit limited as well.) Since reporters are still milling around in the gym, we do exercise hour outside. Leevy's friend Billa gets a pick-up ball game going, and Leevy chooses me for her team. I do not prove to be a good choice, but she's nice about it.

The last period of the day is free study, which seems to last forever because I'm not interested in anything. Edder comes by to meet me to walk home. He has exercise hour last, and smells like it. I don't mind.

He's quiet as we walk, and finally stops at the base of a trail that leads up to a little park (really just a hill that no one has bothered to do anything with). He tugs my hand and we walk up. At the top, kids over the years have made a seating area of logs, and we sit down on one of them. He gives me a proper kiss, but it's a little distracted, like everything else today. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and says, "I meant it this morning, Delilah. We shouldn't be doing this."

"Okay," I say.

"I do like you. I can't believe Peeta held out on me about how great you are."

"Peeta thinks I'm a random sister who forgets to come home at night."

"Don't say that around Mom. She'll put your mother under surveillance." He puts his hands in his hair and pulls on it, straightening a few curls. "He can't even move, Delly."

"Katniss will save him."

"You have a lot of faith in her."

"Everyone does."

I gather from his expression that he is less sure, but he just says, "The point is, I can't do this while he's in trouble. He's a pain in my ass. I can't stand him most of the time. But I... you know."

"Love him?"

"Yeah. That." He shakes his head helplessly. "He's my little brother. Hawthorne was right. I should have volunteered. And you should be giving out kisses to someone who would volunteer."

"There's only one person who's ever done that, and I think Peeta'd be a little annoyed if I started kissing her."

"Don't joke."

"I'm not joking. You're an average brother. So what? Most people aren't Katniss Everdeen. And Eds? Peeta isn't Prim. Prim wouldn't have stood a chance out there. Peeta's a strong guy, and he has a real shot at coming home. If he hadn't been fighting with Cato to save Katniss, he'd have as much of a shot as any of the others right now, even if they hadn't teamed up."

"My mom didn't think so. She told him Katniss would win."

My jaw drops, quite of its own accord. "What?"

"I don't think she meant it the way it sounded. He'd just said that we were supposed to think that, if she came home, he won. So she said she thought that Katniss would come home and be a victor." He picks at a tuft of weeds by his shoe. "She's said a lot of lousy things to him--she's not making any great mother lists, either--but I think that was the only one that really hurt him. And she didn't mean it the way it came out. I'm pretty sure, anyway. But a mother should probably argue with her son when he says something like that, don't you think, instead of just encouraging him to go ahead and die?"

I don't answer. He's wrong about the other things not hurting Peeta. I have sat by Peeta while he tries not to cry over being called useless and foolish, an idiot like his father, and any number of other endearments Mrs. Mellark has come up with over the years. It's not always, or even very often, but she has a pronounced talent for hurting him with the sharp side of her tongue. The occasional finger bruises on his arm are nothing, and even the black eye she gave him when he was eleven and burned some bread hardly fazed him, but the words hurt him. He learned early on that a well aimed word could inflict a wound as deep as the one Cato's sword left. I think Edder's right that she never means to do it, and I suspect she is genuinely sorry most of the time, especially now. This doesn't stop her from doing it.

Another boy might have become cruel himself after years of this, but Peeta just takes it, absorbs it somehow, and doesn't spit it back up at anyone else. I sometimes imagine it staying inside him like some rancid swamp in his brain--or an infected wound--but if it's there, he never shows it.

"She bought him paints," Edder says abruptly.

"Who...?"

"Mom," he clarifies. "Right after he fought with Cato, Mom bought him this box of paints, so he can do something with his talent other than make disgusting Hunger Games cakes for Cray. She put it on his desk while he was burying himself in that mud. No one else is allowed to touch it."

This surprises me--Mrs. Mellark is pretty stingy, and no one thought Peeta would make it home then. We mostly didn't think he'd make it through the first night. "That's... nice of her."

"I want to do something, so he knows I know I should have spoken up. What should I do?"

I sigh. "I don't know what to tell you. It looks like he's going to come back from hell. Maybe he'll just really need to know that you still see him as Peeta. Maybe he'll just want his big brother around." I am not hopeful about this. Peeta tolerates Edder and sometimes even jokes around with him, but for the most part, they ignore each other.

The anthem saves me from any awkward elaboration on the subject. Mandatory viewing hours have started. I stand up and offer my hand to Edder. He takes it, and we walk down to the square in a friendly way. By the time we get there, there's not much room to stand. Cressida and her cameramen have grabbed the Everdeens and the Mellarks, and Mr. Mellark signals to Edder to come over. I wave him off. When the anthem ends, they are live, and I can see double while Cressida asks their opinions on the new alliance. Mr. Mellark says that he and the Everdeens were old friends. Mrs. Mellark adds a story I didn't know, and which may be fabricated, which involves Mrs. Everdeen having helped with Peeta's birth. "So Katniss was there from the start, in our living room while Peeta was born upstairs," she finishes up. "I swear, they were crying at each other."

If the story is fabricated, Mrs. Everdeen doesn't seem inclined to call her out on it, which makes me think it might have at least a grain of truth somewhere.

The coverage switches to District Two, where Cato's and Clove's families are talking about all the sports they play, and how Clove wanted to be on the boys' teams for everything because she was so strong. Cato, in this telling, was the only boy who regularly allowed it. In District Five, Finch's brother and sister brag about her grades, and say that she could share her textbooks because she memorized them. Thresh's sister leads us through the silo where he works, showing some kind of harvesting innovation he's made that cuts down on air and helps keep the grain fresher.

A still picture of Thresh appears, and jets to the left side of the screen. Finch's picture goes to the right. Cato and Clove go to the top, and Katniss and Peeta appear on the bottom. The pictures swell to fill the screen, then an effect blows them apart, revealing Claudius Templesmith, smiling. "Welcome back!" he says. "Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark had an exciting morning today..." He recaps Katniss's search, and shows footage of her finding him in the mud. I think they have enhanced Peeta's eyes, because I don't recall them being quite so bright this morning. He shows a few shots of Katniss washing mud off of him, and cutting through his undershirt.

"It's taking some time to relieve Peeta of his camouflage," Claudius says cheerfully. "In the meantime, let's check on our other tributes."

Thresh is hunting, though it's not clear if he's hunting for food or victims. Either way, he beans a rabbit with a rock, which is no small feat. He hangs the rabbit from his belt and keeps moving. Finch is attempting to build a shelter out of greenwood. Her design is good, but she can't seem to make it work. Cato and Clove have found a new stream on the far side of the Cornucopia field, and are cooking fish.

"I don't think they came this way," Clove says.

Cato give an indifferent shrug. "Yeah, but Thresh is down here somewhere. I think we can take him if we're together."

"He's not the one who got an eleven," Clove says bitterly. "I want to kill Katniss Everdeen. That'll do for Loverboy, too, since you apparently missed."

Booing in the square drowns out a few more lines, and a few shoes are thrown at the screen. By the time it's over, they've finally returned to Katniss and Peeta. I'd think it was old footage, but the forest sunlight is the same as it was for Finch. It's afternoon for them, and she's still washing him. She's managed to get him propped against a rock and get his hair clean, and is struggling with his pants, averting her eyes. This gets giggles in the square.

Then the pants come free, and the giggling stops.

Katniss's face registers very real horror. So does every face in District Twelve. Where Peeta's left thigh once was, there is angry, festering mountain of flesh, erupting pus and blood as the pressure from the fabric releases. In the midst of it, I can see a flash of white, which is his bone. Katniss tries to rearrange her face into something more clinical, but doesn't quite manage it.

Katniss flatly lies and tells him it's only so-so. "You should see some of the people they bring my mother from the mines."

This piques the interest of our crowd of reporters, and the next thing I know, Mrs. Everdeen is in the corner of the screen. We can see her looking up at herself and at Katniss and Peeta.

"Have you taught Katniss any healing?" the reporters ask.

Mrs. Everdeen, looking like she wants to step through her little inset box and go help, shakes her head, but says, "She knows more than she thinks she does. Look. She's going to clean it. That's always the first step. And she'll need to get some food in him somehow. And..." She looks less than hopeful. "She'll have to drain it. I hope she still has those leaves her friend gave her."

Claudius comes on screen, now occupying the other corner, so we don't miss a moment of the cleansing of Peeta's legs. "We saw, earlier in the clean-up effort, that Katniss does, in fact, have the leaves her mother mentioned. She used them to clear up the remaining tracker jacker stings." He turns to watch. The removal of mud from Peeta's legs turns out not to be interesting, so they enlarge Mrs. Everdeen's picture and ask her about what she would use on a wound like this. I can tell it's the last thing she wants to do, but she knows as well as the rest of us do that the more screen time Katniss and Peeta get, the more likely a very generous sponsor is to send Peeta the medicine he needs. She goes over all the herbs she uses to treat fevers and infection, and brings Prim up to talk about bandaging. The Capitol must be eating this up--folk wisdom from the hinterlands--because they don't break away from it until Peeta's legs are clean and Katniss announces that they are going to "experiment a little" and promptly uses the leaves to cause a river of pus to flow out of Peeta's leg.

Mrs. Everdeen, back in her smaller corner of the screen, confirms that this is exactly what she needed to do, though the cameras don't stay on it long. The Capitol is apparently not fond of pus. Judging by her face, neither is Katniss. Peeta asks her for a kiss--joking, I think--but as she's kneeling in a puddle of diseased fluids, I can't really blame her for not indulging him.

"This is usually the part when Katniss decides she needs to go hunting," Prim says, sitting down beside me, her eyes twinkling. Edder is with her. She is wearing what it takes me a minute to recognize as one of Peeta's old winter jackets, the hood pulled up to hide her hair and most of her face. I'm guessing it's not as inconspicuous as she thinks it is in the middle of summer, but she's being left largely unmolested. "Funny how we're always in most need of game when there's pus."

"It looks like she's sticking around this time," Edder says.

"She's tougher than she thinks she is."

"That cut looks worse than I thought," I admit.

"It's about what Mom and I expected," Prim says. "We watched the thing with the doctor--they replayed it in late night--and figured on what was in the mud. It's probably been keeping his fever down a little. Katniss will need to find something new to do that. Probably slowing down the bleeding a little bit, too. But it's mud. Things live in it."

We watch as Katniss bandages the wound, and everyone laughs when she makes Peeta hold a backpack over himself while she washes his undershorts. Prim snorts. Mrs. Everdeen has finally been released by the reporters, and she and the Mellarks come over. Gale Hawthorne wanders over from a crowd of Seam kids. He is laughing, too. "She can gut a wild dog, but that throws her?"

The Capitol editors are having fun with it as well, focusing on the backpack as much as they can. Peeta dozes off, leaving nothing more interesting from them than, quite literally, watching his clothes dry on the rocks.

The coverage goes back to the Capitol, where today's topic seems to be historical lovers where one of them is deathly ill. Capitol citizens name their favorites. Peeta and Katniss are high on the list, duly compared to the Last Queen of Denmark, who stayed by her dying consort while Copenhagen drowned, then threw herself on a ceremonial sword. In Capitol terms, this is romantic. In District Twelve, Gale perhaps summarizes it best when he says, "Wasn't it her job to be getting her people to dry land instead?"

Even Mr. Mellark, a confirmed romantic most times, doesn't argue with this. "Would everyone like to join us for supper?" he asks.

Mrs. Everdeen looks surprised, and glances at Mrs. Mellark, who is smiling tightly, but not revoking the invitation.

We all go to the bakery. Gale looks deeply uncomfortable, but has been hunting, and contributes a rabbit, saying he already sent the rest home with his brothers, and was just going to sell the rabbit. Mr. Mellark promptly (well, as soon as Mrs. Mellark isn't looking) buys it at a fair price. We all keep an eye on the television, but it's mainly showing Cato trying to hunt a deer with a spear and sword. Gale finds the whole thing hilarious, especially the commentator talking like it's remotely likely to be successful.

"Why isn't it?" I ask.

"Spear-hunting's better for open plains," he says. "All he's going to do in the woods is probably stick a tree. The girl with the throwing knives would do better, and even that's a long shot." He gives a snort of laughter. "And what does he think he's going to do with the sword on a deer? Duel its antlers?"

As we sit down, they finally come back to Katniss and Peeta. She's got him awake, bandaged, and dressed, and they're trying to walk downstream. She is looking around desperately and finally spies something.

"What's she got?" Edder asks.

"Cave," Gale grunts. "See the mouth?" He points to a shadowy area.

No one speaks as Mr. Mellark serves up a rabbit stew with flatbread on the side. Katniss gets them settled and tries to hide the opening--Gale is disgusted with her handiwork and says he's going to have to go over blinds with her when she gets back. She tears it down and goes back in. This must have been a place the Gamemakers expected people to find, because the cameras are obviously already in place from several angles. Peeta calls her, and she comes to him and brushes his hair out of his eyes. It's a surprisingly tender gesture from her, and Gale stops eating. Mrs. Everdeen and Prim both look confused.

"I feel like we should give them some privacy," Edder says.

"They're in the middle of a show," Gale says, and digs deliberately into his stew. "It's all for an audience. Privacy would defeat the whole purpose."

"Look, if I don't make it back--" Peeta says, but Katniss stops him.

"Don't talk like that. I didn't drain all that pus for nothing."

This gets a smile from Mrs. Everdeen.

"I know, but just in case I don't--"

Katniss looks at him crossly. "No, Peeta, I don't even want to discuss it."

I wish she'd let him say whatever he means to say. Just in case.

He tries one more time. "But I--"

And then she kisses him.

I hear something clatter and look over my shoulder. Gale has stood up, knocking his stew and utensils to the floor. He glares at the screen.

I love how this story has transformed and even though it's all through Delly's perspective, we get a lot of insight on the other characters. I loved the end because that's pretty much how I expected Gale to react.

Well, one of the reasons I picked Delly was that she was in a position to see the others, and isn't quite as invested as, say, Prim or Gale or Mr. Mellark. Invested enough to actually care, but distant enough that she's not dragged into the media-generated drama too much and can see it from the outside.

I'm going to try hard to make Gale okay, but still his jealous self--the next thing that happens, he's being really douchey, but then, so is Peeta's brother. Not being a huge Gale fan, that's a challenge, but I don't imagine he'd have been Katniss's friend for years if he wasn't an okay guy.

Yeah, there were times when you wanted to take and shake her--honey, listen to your own thoughts on this! Gale kisses you and you think, "Huh, Gale has lips. Let's hunt." Then you spend hours fixating on Peeta's eyelashes when you haven't kissed him for months. Your audience is not mystified about this...